Sparke, Evernote zip file, and evernote app in duplicate, and what exactly are location services up to?

[GreyGray 15]

In my efforts to see if the Helper Application simply writes file to a sort of watch folder that then gets read into the main app once opened, I have stumbled on what I think is a way to accomplish it.  However, I also found some other items that I need clarifications on.

 

For the record, since I will be sending in this to Evernote support, is it possible as Michaels has been able to do, to have the Helper Application icon in the menu bar not be there, but still hit the keyboard commands and have it spawn the same window, and NOT launch Evernote just as the Helper Application icon does now?  I am just running out of mens bar space and would love to get rid of that icon as I know it is there, and get to it via the keyboard, no need for it to be in the menu of the Finder title bar.

 

If I can create the files in a specific format, which appears to be JSON as far as I can tell, I should be able to add my own Helper App style items by placing them in the correct location.  There is a bit more to it that that, but in theory, I think it would work.

 

There are files at this location:

~/Library/Group\ Containers/Q79WDW8YH9.com.evernote.Evernote/Evernote/quick-note/my_user_id___Evernote/quick-note-dknji9 

It appears there is one for each entry that you would have made in the Helper Application that is in the menu bar.

 

This file:

~/Library/Group\ Containers/Q79WDW8YH9.com.evernote.Evernote/Evernote/quick-note/my)user_id___Evernote/quick-note-dknji9/quick-note-preserved.obj

What I don't understand is the unique ID's and where they come from. There is an sqlite DB close by, it could be the UUID or some other auto-increment number, it will need some more research.  Or some AppleScript I believe can return some of these unique ID's.  I wish the Helper app had Applescript support.

 

The file itself, is just a standard formatted file, looks very basic to make a tool that would write the data out in this format:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/340087/drops/08.05.15/formatted-fe-014733.txt

 

What I also found, and asked before, but did not get an answer, was that at

~/Library/Caches/com.evernote.Evernote/

 

Keeping in mind that I am running 6.0.16, not 6.0.13 and not 6.0.15m where is .14?

 

There are the following: 

     Sparkle/Evernote 123456/Evernote_RELEASE_6.0.13_451655.zip

     Sparkle/Evernote 123456/Evernote.app ( The app i version 6.0.15 )

These files take up a decent amount of space with the zip wishing in at 75MB and the app at 143MB

What are these for, can they be deleted?

 

What is "net.hockeyapp.sdk.mac" in the same area?

 

What is "fsCachedData" data?  ( It looks like XML, but there are a ton of NULLS in it and it is binary data, which makes me think it is some sort of pre-imported sqlite file?  The days on them are a bit ages, what expires them, what keeps them from building up? Where is the script or tool that cleans these files and how can it be forced to run to clean all these seemingly orphaned files up? )

 

What is "ENHttpCache", there are a ton of .png files in there, all of which are broken and can't be read.  Also some getting very old, large in quantity, and nothing that seems to be cleaning up these also seemingly orphaned files.  They are all in a container called "caches" which in almost all cases has been safe for me to delete, but in this case, I am not familiar with what Evernote is up to so I don't want to delete them until I understand what they are for and how they are created, used, and hopefully cleaned up.

 

Some of these files have massively long file names as well, which I can see being an issue if your store your data on other FS's than a Mac OS X HFS Plus filesystem.  Here is a random sampling of an image filename that is a png that I can't open in anything, but has a wonderful filename:

blogassets.evernote.com+wp-content+uploads+2014+11+BlogImage_MAR14118_WEB_Presence_Screen_KT_v1_600px.png

 

Running `file` on any of these shows something interesting: NeXT/Apple typedstream data, little endian, version 4, system 1000

Everything I'm reading about this file format, makes me wonder how it ended up in Evernote.  The little endian at least tells me this was made intentionally, I think, and that the code that read them was ported from the PPC architecture to Intel.  I just wonder why they used such a strange format, one that seems prone for errors for something that is being labeled a .png.  I think this is a part of very old Cocoa code, and from what I am reading, it is prone to bus crashes and full blown crashing.  This may be a good idea to change, a good place for optimization or at least a good place to start that will perhaps stop random crashes that are hard to track down.  opening it in a hex editor reveals a bit more, but I will keep that out of the forums since it is not important to most.

 

What seems to be a basic png tosses this error to system.log trying to open it in the Finder:

Aug  5 02:05:53 me.local Preview[18615]: PVImageContainer initWithURL:file:///Users/me/Library/Caches/com.evernote.Evernote/ENHttpCache/a.tiles.mapbox.com+v3+evnote.atfull3+3+4+2.png failed, error = Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=259 "The file “a.tiles.mapbox.com+v3+evnote.atfull3+3+4+2.png” could not be opened." UserInfo=0x7f96f6264d40 {NSURL=file:///Users/me/Library/Caches/com.evernote.Evernote/ENHttpCache/a.tiles.mapbox.com+v3+evnote.atfull3+3+4+2.png, NSLocalizedDescription=The file “a.tiles.mapbox.com+v3+evnote.atfull3+3+4+2.png” could not be opened., NSLocalizedRecoverySuggestion=It may be damaged or use a file format that Preview doesn’t recognize.}

 

So preview can'r read them, Photoshop supports about 30 formats, and it could not read the file without tossing a ton of errors to the syslog. Evernote is unable to read them as well as far as importing them into a note.  Opening it in PhotoShop actually crashed it.  I am confused about these, what are they for, why such an obscure file format?  I can read some of the file, running `strings` on it shows there is a ton of XML in it, lots of meta data, references to photoshop 1.0, and googling around, no love on something to read it unless I want to fire up some code and write a reader.  Any reason not to use something like plain text, so there is much less of a chance of these files causing crashes?  There is not a lot of love for this file format on the web, and why call it a png if it is not a png?  Some are quite large for a png as well, 2MB or so, some a little larger, some smaller.

 

Finally, can someone at Evernote explain to me why the Helper Application calls out to Location Services all the time? What is it up to?  Running a packet sniffer while it is happening, I see my IP talking a ton to 17.*.*.* which is Apple's CIDR range, so it seems the data is being sent off to them.  How come?  What is the data, why does this need to happen?  I have turned it off for the Helper app in System Prefs, but left it alone for the main app, since I like that notes get tagged with my location.  However, I will turn that off too until someone tells me what this so far, seemingly secret data is up to.

 

P.S. — How do you do code blocks in these forums?  I don't see an icon that represents that?

 

P.P.S. — Is the only way to add images through the little image icon, and those are not embedded in the forums?  I was using Dropbox to get a URL, and figured the forums would have sucked up the image, but after deleting the images from DropBox as they will close my account if these forums get loaded too much, there is a little blue icon in Safari to let me know the image is missing.  Is there some other way to add images that is more permanent?  If not I will just use imgur.com from now on.

[Metrodon 2,184]

 

 

For the record, since I will be sending in this to Evernote support, is it possible as Michaels has been able to do, to have the Helper Application icon in the menu bar not be there, but still hit the keyboard commands and have it spawn the same window, and NOT launch Evernote just as the Helper Application icon does now?  I am just running out of mens bar space and would love to get rid of that icon as I know it is there, and get to it via the keyboard, no need for it to be in the menu of the Finder title bar.

 

No

 

This is really a user forum, most of your questions are about using the app in a way that isn't likely to be supported by Evernote which is fine but your best bet is really to contact Evernote support to see if they are willing to answer you. Otherwise, you are going to have a bunch of other users fumbling around and guessing at the correct answers.

 

The Developer thread may also be a decent resource for you.

[GreyGray 15]

 

 

 

For the record, since I will be sending in this to Evernote support, is it possible as Michaels has been able to do, to have the Helper Application icon in the menu bar not be there, but still hit the keyboard commands and have it spawn the same window, and NOT launch Evernote just as the Helper Application icon does now?  I am just running out of mens bar space and would love to get rid of that icon as I know it is there, and get to it via the keyboard, no need for it to be in the menu of the Finder title bar.

 

No

 

This is really a user forum, most of your questions are about using the app in a way that isn't likely to be supported by Evernote which is fine but your best bet is really to contact Evernote support to see if they are willing to answer you. Otherwise, you are going to have a bunch of other users fumbling around and guessing at the correct answers.

 

The Developer thread may also be a decent resource for you.

 

 

Well, that is what is confusing to me, look at the preferences, there is an option to toggle on and off the "Show EverNote Helper in the Menu Bar" which leads one to think you can toggle the visual display of that off.  However, if I turn that checkbox off, it forces the other checkboxes to behave in a strange way.  Why have the option to turn it off it that is also going to stop the Helper app from running, and also stop it from restating after a reboot?  As it is now, for me, with the version I am running, there is no need for the other two checkboxes, as just toggling the firsts one performs the actions of the second two.  Another user apparently has a working setup on more than on machine, so either I am misunderstanding what it is that he is performing, or the version I am running behaves different.  I am certainly not running the same versions, but I can't locate the versions he is running, and I also don't know how successful you can be with downgrading a version, that would all depend on if there are database changes and other things of that nature that will affect how the data is stored in my version, versus a lower and older version.  

 

Beta's don't come in for me.

 

My other questions seem relevant to me, there are files and folders all over the place that are taking up a ton of space.  I don't think it is outside the scope of forums to ask other users if they too are experiencing it.  Otherwise, I find if I ask support, it is harder for them to take the time to look into it unless it affects more than one or two users.

[Metrodon 2,184]

I think you've misunderstood JM - take a look at the original thread again.

[GreyGray 15]

I think you've misunderstood JM - take a look at the original thread again.

 

I am re-reading it now, and will finish tomorrow later.  However, i still don't understand the existence of the preferences if I am in fact reading his post wrong.  Why allow me to remove the icon but force the other checkboxes to toggle to off?  Save the space and just have the one checkbox.  It is impossible to interact with the others depending on how you set it the first checkbox.  Just disabling the visual indicator does not usually mean that the functionality stops working, at least, not in all the menu driven apps I am or have used in the past. I think DropBox is the only one that doesn't, but it used to, you used to be able to toggle the menu icon on and off as well as change its color.  But the menu bar is like the iPhones launch pad, prime real estate, so I think more and more companies want their icon up there al the time no matter what.